Exactly my thoughts last night.
Asking for a donation seems fair to me but so far I struggle with thinking about the practical side of it.
If I see that right our (not necessarily everyone's though) interest is gathering information, seeing as many guitars as possible (even if it's just pics), hoping for new jigsaw puzzle pieces and maybe also honing IDing skills. Occasionally, this brings up something we haven't seen before, something with
information value. I think we wouldn't want to stifle that in any way, even at the risk of being "exploited" as a free value appraisal service.
I think we're basically interested in all guitars, with the probably less rewarding ones being those that come up most often - the unidentifiable ones, the non-Japanese production of some legit or non-legit kind of cheapos, and only the forensics on fakes is mildly interesting (to me, can't speak for everyone here). With all that in mind, I wonder what the right time and reason/circumstances might be to ask for a donation? Donation for identification, for a value estimation or both?
- It's hard to predict what their intention is before doing much of the work to help them finding out "what I have there". It can be also hard to predict whether or not that could bring up some
information value for the research side of things. Of course we can ask them what their intention is, at the risk of people seeing through the question and answering it accordingly.
- If we want to ask for a donation for IDing, it could be as easy as spotting the first pictures and judging whether or not the information exchange will be unilateral from the forum to them, then asking for a donation. The question is, what is the threshold of information value, or in other, less cryptic words - what do we have to see on the first pictures to ask for a donation? Vintage vs. contemporary? MIJ vs MISomeplace else? Cheap vs expensive? Obvious vs. obscure? Edit, important one...: Post count?
- If we ask for donations for value appraisals, what are the criteria to assess the value (are there any needed?) beyond today's seat of the pants? Are there risks or ramifications to fear? "But the guys at the TF said it's worth more/less than that!!"
I don't mean to make this more complicated than it should be tho, I'm just sharing what went through my mind about this, and by "we" and "us" I mean 90% "you".